Printer-friendly

Contact Author

March 10, 2009

Team Health Reports

St. Louis Cardinals

by Brad Wochomurka

ST. LOUIS CARDINALS Team Audit | DT Cards | PECOTA Cards | Depth Chart

Head Trainer: Barry Weinberg
Player Days Lost: 1,520
Total Dollars Lost: $29.9 million
Injury Cost: $28 million

Trend: Negative. Weinberg and his staff certainly did a solid job with several players, but you still can't ignore the fact that this team has nearly tripled its days lost to injury since the World Series club of '06. That said, the Cards did have their fair share of freak injuries, and also a lot of holdover rehabs from previous seasons. The former is best represented by Chris Duncan, who will be playing in '09 with a titanium disk in his neck as he attempts to come back from a surgery that was the first of its kind for a professional athlete. The latter group includes players like Chris Carpenter, Mark Mulder, Matt Clement, Tyler Johnson, and Juan Encarnacion—all of whom were expected to miss most of, if not the entire, season. The training staff gets its biggest gold star for keeping Albert Pujols' elbow intact on his way to winning the NL MVP Award; there were questions at this time last year about how many games he could actually play, and 148 games later Pujols had another shiny trophy for his mantle. This season Weinberg and his staff will be showered with praise if Chris Carpenter can simply be a productive member of the rotation for most of the year. More realistically, they should be measured based on how healthy they can keep a group of fragile outfielders, the team's new ace in Adam Wainwright, and, once again, their power-hitting corner infielders.

The Shape of the Season: